No alliance for BJD, BJP in Odisha; talks hit Assembly seats hurdle

After much deliberations, held across Bhubaneswar and Delhi, the BJD and BJP have decided not to form an alliance, with Odisha BJP president Manmohan Samal declaring Friday that the party would fight all the 21 Lok Sabha constituencies and 147 Assembly seats alone in the coming simultaneous polls.

In his statement, Samal thanked the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD for its support to the BJP government at the Centre at key moments, but said the BJP did not agree with the BJD government on many issues pertaining to “the interests of Odia people”, like “Odia asmita (pride)”, and “Odia glory”.

Though there was no official reaction from the BJD to Samal’s statement till Friday evening, party leaders said it was ready to fight alone.

A senior BJP leader familiar with the developments in Odisha said the final call had been taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the top leadership, “after assessing the ground realities”. “There is a wave in favour of Modi,” the leader said.

He added that the push for an alliance came from the BJD side. “There is warmth and trust between the PM and Naveen babu (Naveen Patnaik), and (Patnaik’s aide V K) Pandian wanted to build on it. The proposal and the talks happened because of that.”

As the talks began recently, the central BJP was seen as not averse to an alliance with the BJD, even as the state unit resisted. The BJP has been growing in the state and is now the clear number two, with the Congress far behind. Odisha BJP leaders argued that there was no need for the party to enter an alliance and give up the Opposition space.

Eventually the talks fell through on the contentious issue of sharing of Assembly seats. The BJD reportedly did not want to contest on anything less than 100 of the 147 Assembly